The Fourth Child Jessica Winter (i love reading .txt) 📖

girls were in or out, who was “mad at” or “ignoring” or “in a fight with” or “had a boneto pick with” who, whether it was better to pick sides or stay neutral, how much power Lauren had in the middle of these conflicts,how she should use that power when she had it, and how she could get it back when she didn’t. It was a relief to escape allthis, and for it to be out of her control. She was excused until further notice from entering a classroom to a row of headsturning slowly toward her, each pair of eyes dark and knowing and mad at you. First she would have to figure out why (but “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you”) and then she would have to make up for it somehow (but “If you were really sorry you wouldn’t have done it in the first place”). And she was also excused until further notice from being one of the swiveling heads, moving in sync toward their target.

For the most part, Lauren was either the swiveling head or the neutral bystander, not the target. People sometimes told hershe was pretty, and maybe that was part of why. She got “heart-shaped face” a lot. Adults said, “You look just like your mother.”

“People say certain things to mothers about their daughters, almost out of habit,” Mom said. “You look like your dad.”

People think you are what you look like. Back in seventh grade, Lauren couldn’t figure out what was going on with Renée Zeitlerand Kelly Kavanaugh from swim team, who had to be fake friends because their mothers were best friends. Renée was always burstinginto tears when she had to spend too much time with Kelly, and Kelly went back and forth between jumping up and down for Renée’sapproval and totally ignoring her. It was strange. There was something behind it that everyone knew was there but no one couldsee. But then, coming back from a meet in Batavia, Lauren got a ride with Kelly in the back of Kelly’s dad’s station wagon,and Lauren thought maybe she had figured it out.

Kelly suggested, whispering, that they “do practice-kissing.” “I just trust you,” Kelly told Lauren, “and if we practice with each other, that means we’ll be really good at it when we do it with boys.”

“We have to lie down flat,” Kelly added, “so my dad doesn’t see us.” The small of Lauren’s back ached in the gap between thereverse-facing seats. Kelly’s hand under Lauren’s clothes and on her breasts was clumsy but confident. Kelly opened her mouthas wide as it would go and set in motion the suctioning hydraulics of her tongue for the duration of Roxette’s “Listen toYour Heart.”

Lauren didn’t want to be doing this, and she hadn’t really agreed to it, but she did find it interesting. She had never kissedanyone on the lips before, except once in a while Mom. She had definitely never kissed anyone with wetness, open lips, her senses of taste and sound involved, or had another person’s tongue inside her mouth, and when she did think about another person’s tongue inside her mouth it was a boy. She did mind that Kelly was doing this, but she didn’t mind enough to ask Kelly to stop, or do anything that might draw the attention of Kelly’s father up in the driver’s seat, and so she waited for it to be over the way she waited for her brothers to stop doing any number of things when she had to share the back seat with them—pinching, kicking, close-shouting, a spitty finger in her ear—while also thinking about how she might get back at them sometime later.

Kelly moaned a little, and it harmonized with the chorus of “Listen to Your Heart.”

The following day, during Technology & Business, which used to be called Shop, half the class—the boys—plugged in power sandersacross the room from where the other half of the class—the girls—sat down to play Monopoly around a square wooden table riddledwith splinters and gouge marks. Lauren stared at Renée, who was fidgeting with the dog player piece. She kept staring afterRenée had noticed.

“Renée, it’s okay,” Lauren finally said. “We all know.”

The table fell silent. Eyes flicked around. Renée looked terrified. “What?”

“It’s okay,” Lauren said, looking away from Renée and swiveling toward Kelly. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Renée.”

Kelly bleated a laugh. She wanted it to sound confused, like she was laughing at a freak blabbering nonsense, but insteadit was like she was admitting something. By the end of class, Renée was sobbing as Jamie and Shannon consoled her, Kelly wasvomiting in the bathroom, and poor one-eyed Mr. Van Den Leek was hovering near the scene, hesitant to turn his back on theboys carving birdhouses, asking if anyone needed the nurse. Mr. Van Den Leek never knew what to do with the girls, and henever let any of them use the bandsaw.

It was all so easy, Lauren thought now. It was all too easy.

That was in the fall. There was another big one in the winter. On the bus home from the ski club’s weekly Saturday-night trip to Kissing Bridge, Lauren shared a seat with Danielle Sheridan. Danielle had gotten breasts and hips and several inches in height all at once. She had a doll’s face: perfect-circle eyes, and it was like her freckles were painted on, and her cheeks still had a toddler plumpness. Now her doll’s head was sewn on the wrong body. Danielle was turned around in her seat to face Jeff Leidecki and Evan Lewis, who were best friends. Jeff’s mini–boom box was playing N.W.A, which was what all the boys were listening to now, and Danielle was standing up on her knees, snaking her shoulders and whipping the yarn of her long doll’s hair more or less in time with the guitar sample looping over and over. Lauren turned halfway around in her seat, too, to observe Danielle, flinching away when Danielle’s gyrating head swung too close. Jeff